Yext For Loan Officers

Henry

2 years ago

Yext is a powerful SEO and reputation management tool used in almost every industry. However, many loan officers and mortgage brokers are wondering how Yext can work for their business model. In this post, we break down everything you need to know about this powerful technology – from a loan officer’s perspective.

What is Yext for Loan Officers?

Yext is a technology company that specializes in online brand management. Specifically, Yext uses API technology to keep your reviews, website, address, phone number, and services consistent across the internet.

There are thousands of catalogs, directories, and blogs with your business information listed. It is virtually impossible for loan officers to find their info and update every time something changes. This is where Yext steps in. Not only are they updating your information, but giving your website great visibility with Google.

Additionally, there are thousands of search engines all over the web. Most websites have search engine functionality. However, these site search engines are extremely out of date. This causes inaccurate information to appear for a user who searches for terms like, “local loan officers.”

Thankfully, Yext technology allows your site to populate in local search engines too. Specifically, this tech formats your content for user intent so your brand can populate at higher rankings in local search engines as well.

Yext Product Categories

Yext technology can seem overwhelming at first. However, breaking down their core features can help make sense of the tech and how it affects loan officers’ marketing plan. Yext has 4 main features: Listings, Reviews, Answers & Pages.

Listings are fairly straightforward. Yext claims to list your business accurately across every app, map, voice assistant, social media channel, and search engine. This spreads your brand to users using Google, Alexa, Yelp, Facebook, and any other listing you can think about using.

Listing your business on common apps and platforms can be extremely time-consuming. Additionally, you may list your business incorrectly and miss out on traffic to your website. The listing features allows Yext to do all the heavy lifting. Yext’s direct integration allows you to manage business information across hundreds of platforms from one central location. This feature is extremely valuable to any loan officer trying to expand their brand across the internet.

Review by Yext is the second key feature for loan officers. Reviews are the lifeblood of online brand management. However, it can be time-consuming trying to manage your reviews across Google, Facebook, Zillow, and other review platforms. Often, loan officers neglect review management and end up losing out on this powerful ranking factor; inevitably leading to a loss of business.

Yext Reviews gives you access to reviews across their entire Knowledge Network. Meaning, you can respond to reviews, uncover new information about your brand, and improve your internal processes to better serve the borrower. Additionally, using the Yext Review platform allows you to generate reviews on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Zillow. These reviews help you stand out, rank higher, and drive more business.

Yext Answers is a unique product feature that creates a custom search experience on your website or app. Yext uses its advanced search technology to build a modern search engine on your website.

This intuitive search engine attempts to create a deeper connection with your customers. Furthermore, this piece of tech answers directly, with natural language, no matter the complexity of the question. In a fast-paced business environment, Yext Answers solves consumer questions immediately. This reflects greatly on your brand and becomes a true value to the consumer.

The last core feature built by Yext for Loan Officers is Pages. This feature creates custom landing pages on your website that drive conversions from your target customer. Furthermore, these landing pages are built for search engine discoverability.

Consumers are asking Google more complex and unique questions than ever before. Therefore, search engines want to give the user the best answer. Often, the webpage that answers your customer’s question is not a homepage or service page. Therefore, Yext builds customer web pages that are designed to answer users’ top searched questions. By designing your website around your customer, your search presence goes through the roof.

All in all, there is no default way to use Yext for loan officers. Understand your marketing strategy and your business needs. From there, you can build a custom solution using Yext technology.

How to use Yext For Loan Officers?

Yext has a three-step setup plan: Choose, Update, and Fix. First, you need to decide what package fits your business model. Below is a breakdown of pricing and features for all four packages. Once you have decided on the right solution, you can move on to update.

Once you select the package, you will get access to your Yext dashboard. The dashboard gives you the ability to update your business information across the entire web. This is a huge benefit of using Yext for loan officers and mortgage lenders. Now, there is one place that you can update your address, phone number, and website.

Once you have updated your information, you can let Yext do the fixing. Most loan officers already have business information on the internet. When your info is accurate in the dashboard, Yext will scan the internet and fix any inaccurate information. This is a huge benefit for brand protection and reputation.

Yext is pretty straightforward. Update your info and let the technology do the heavy lifting. With that said, it is vital that you pick the right package and plan that fits your business goals.

Yext Pricing & Features

There are 4 basic pricing plans: Emerging, Essential, Complete, & Premium. Your volume, marketing budget, and online presence will ultimately decide what pricing best fits your business.

Yext For Loan Officers

The emerging plan costs $16 a month, or $199 annually. This plan gives you access to about 30 online listings. The biggest issue I see with this plan is the lack of credible listings that are available at your disposal. Specifically, this package gives you access to 30 ’emerging,’ online listing services.

Specifically, Yellow Pages, Show Me Local, and Yellow Moxie are used in this plan. I recommend this plan if your budget is minimal and you have already built a GMB profile. However, it will be an inefficient way to manage your listings long term.

If you have an extra $20 a month, I recommend using the Essential plan. Yext for loan officers is meant to be a one-stop online listing and review management system. Therefore, if you are going to pay for the service, you might as well use the package that will benefit your business the most. The Essential plan gives you access to the 15 most credible listing services online. This includes Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp, Yahoo, Four Square, and more. Being listed on these sites will boost your local SEO & generate more engagement on your website.

After the Essential plan, you can pay $40 a week, or $499 a month, for the Complete package. The complete package gives you access to the listing services in both the Emerging and Essential plan – including over 50 local listings. In addition to the 50+ local listings, you get access to the Power Listing and Analytics features from Yext.

The Power Listing feature allows you to publish staff bios, calendars, products, and services seamlessly throughout the web. This feature will boost your relevancy with Google, give you more local credibility, and generate more clicks to your website. The analytics feature gives you insights into which listing service is generating the most business to your site. This allows you to track attribution and make informed business decisions. The Complete package is perfect for loan officers and lenders ready to scale in their local marketplace.

Premium is the last package to choose from, costing $76 a month, or $999 a year. If you purchase the Premium Yext solution, you get access to all the listings from the Complete package. In addition to the listing service, you get access to Review Monitoring and a Website Widget feature. Review Monitoring keeps you up to date on the ratings and reviews your business is receiving across the internet. This allows you to track your brand perception across the web seamlessly. Additionally, the website widget allows you to add all of your Yext content to your website dynamically.

All in all, each package has various services and features. It is important to understand your business’ needs before you decide on the right Yext solution.

Benefits of Yext for Loan Officers

Yext is a powerful marketing tool that is a perfect fit for most mortgage brokers, lenders, and loan officers. The importance of local SEO is growing every day. With monthly updates to the Google algorithm, it is vital that your business is authentic, credible, and verified. That is where Yext for loan officers steps in. Yext technology gives you access to change, update, and confirm your business information in minutes – giving you a better local ranking in your marketplace.

Another major benefit is constant review management. Consumers look for brands with quality reviews. However, it is almost impossible to monitor reviews across every listing service. With Yext, you are able to monitor, reply, and reflect on every review your business gets. There are entire review management companies that try to achieve this. With Yext, you get premier listing services and review management.

While there are a ton of unique benefits to Yext, the two features that benefit loan officers are local SEO power and review management. At the end of the day, every loan officer should be considering Yext as a major part of their marketing tech stack.

Things to Consider

Yext has an amazing product and service catalog. From reputation management to local SEO, there is little to not like about Yext for loan officers. With that said, there is one aspect of this technology to take into account when purchasing.

When you sign up for Yext, you pay monthly, or annually, for their listing service. This gives you access to all of their products for the duration of your payment plan. If you decide to cut ties with Yext, your listings do not follow you.

Yext best suits your business as a long-term mortgage marketing partner. If you are considering building out your own listings, scanning the web for reviews, and managing all of this in-house, Yext is not for you. This piece of technology best suits loan officers that want to take a step back and let Yext do the heavy lifting for the foreseeable future.

With that said, there are few reasons not to love Yext in the mortgage industry. They demystify local search and reputation management for loan officers, brokers, and lenders alike.

If you are interested in more marketing topics, dig into the following posts:

Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.

Henry

Henry has spent the bulk of his career working for mortgage companies and marketing agencies. He uses his experience in the martech industry to guide his strategies and insights in the mortgage and real estate world. He firmly believes that marketing success in every industry boils down to a technology-centered strategy.